GUEST EDITORIAL: State fails to prioritize college funding

With tuition increases ranging as high at 8.5 percent for post-secondary public education this fall, the question must be raised: Are Tennessee's political leaders really as committed to improving educational attainment as they say they are?

Last fall, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission recommended the state allocate an additional $29.6 million for 2014-15, based on the funding formula the state itself set under the 2010 Complete College Tennessee Act. That would have left students enrolling in colleges, universities and technology centers facing only 2 to 4 percent increases in tuition - a level of increase that more families could reasonably manage.

Gov. Bill Haslam was prepared only to allocate an additional $9.3 million - to cover the UT system's five campuses, the Board of Regents' six universities, 13 community colleges and 27 technology centers. Then, early this year, the word came that state tax collections were again to post a shortfall. At last count, revenue projections were off by $260 million.

Suddenly, even the $9.3 million promise evaporated.

Thus, last week, UT trustees and Regents determined just how much deeper families and individual students will have to dig into their savings or place more of their future into debt. The average increase will be 6 percent at universities and 5.8 percent at community colleges. Regents universities are also having to raise activity fees. The state's technology centers will see tuition increase as much as 8.5 percent.

We were told that by setting how much money each school gets according to its graduation rate rather its enrollment, Complete College Tennessee was going to move the state forward, ensuring more Tennesseans get to college and then see it through to a degree. And the plan might have worked - if state leaders actually stood behind it.

If education is really "job one" for Tennessee, shouldn't it be buffered against drops in sales tax collections? It is not as if our state hasn't seen these shortfalls on several occasions in the past decade.

Furthermore, will the governor and legislature see how this failed promise only perpetuates the problem? The additional tuition leaves less spending money for families, thus less sales tax collected in Tennessee for the coming year. The state government may have balanced its budget, but it did so on the backs of college-bound students.

- The Tennessean

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GUEST EDITORIAL: State fails to prioritize college funding

With tuition increases ranging as high at 8.5 percent for post-secondary public education this fall, the question must be raised: Are Tennessee's political leaders really as committed to improving